Who, really, is the man in yellow?

Three hundred and twenty-six hours. When I started writing this, that is how much time my boyfriend has put into Enter The Gungeon, the freshman effort from indie developer Dodge Roll Games. By the time you’re reading this, there will probably be another ten hours on the Steam clock, and dozens more posts on the game’s active subreddit.

Bats are friends, not foes

Everybody loves personality tests, because everybody loves hearing about themselves. There’s just one problem with all these tests—they’re totally bogus. Meyers-Briggs? Junk. Blood type? Absurd. Star sign? Well, astrology is very much in right now so to avoid the ire of all of my homosexual Brooklynite readers I’ll just say it’s less than perfect.

The Meatly’s vintage indie horror serial Bendy and the Ink Machine has been fascinating gamers since its first chapter dropped in February of last year. Putting you in the shoes of former cartoonist Henry Stein, the game leads you through the remains of an old-time animation studio. You’re on a quest to “find something” for your former partner, Joey Drew—but what that “something” is isn’t clear until the very end of the final chapter.

When your cosplay gets mistaken for an HD remake screenshot, you know it’s good. And that’s exactly what happened to Geina, aka PokuriMio. Her Legend of Zelda Happy Mask Salesman cosplay is so accurate, so lifelike, that those who saw it simply had no choice other than to believe Nintendo was re-releasing Majora’s Mask on the Switch. The character is a memorable to fans as one of the first characters one encounters in the game, his creepy mannerisms setting the tone for a Zelda adventure significantly darker than Link’s previous outings.

If you’ve ever jumped out of a plane—or party bus, or attack helicopter—to take part in the cultural phenomenon of attempting to kill 99 of your closest friends on an ever-shrinking post-apocalyptic island, the opening moments of Pete Travis’s 2012 film Dredd should be familiar to you.

Despite numerous failures and completely unplayable games, Sonic the Hedgehog has persevered—people just can’t get enough of the little blue devil. In ways, it seems he’s more popular than ever. Most recently, he’s catching up to his 90s rival Mario—albeit 25 years later—and finally getting his own movie.

Sonic fans have stuck with the character through thick and thin, through some of the worst games imaginable with the most bizarre stories you could think of. Fans who grew up with the series and were later struck by the weird, off-the-rails storytelling of the later 3D games might assume things started to get strange there, but I assure you—it’s been there since the very beginning, starting with the backstory of the first Sonic the Hedgehog game for the Sega Genesis.